It was hard to resist running my fingers over the velvet carpet of moss that smoothed the drystone wall’s jagged capstones. Six months ago, after four heatwaves and prolonged drought, these same mosses resembled brown, wizened threads of dried tobacco. Today they were an inch-tall emerald forest again, studded with yellow moss bell toadstools, saturated with overnight rain. Wall-top mosses are resilient, and so is the microscopic life that thrives on them. I collected a few soggy green cushions to investigate later, for “here be monsters”, though most are less than a millimetre long. Tardigrade: the ubiquitous drought-tolerant inhabitant of
Arms Control Was Once Trumps Signature Issue
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